Lessons from a Baseball Season

For boys as baseball-obsessed as mine, who spend hours watching MLB network, gleaning information about players they like and don’t from all across the league, and many more hours watching their favorite team, having said team be in the World Series is pretty much the ultimate reward for being so dedicated all year long.

This post-season run has also provided some discussion points around the breakfast table. As a mom of boys, many times these kinds of life lessons are going to stem from sports, so I’d better take advantage. They are:

1. Yes, baseball is just a game for the viewers, but for the players and coaches, it’s their job (albeit overpaid, they ARE someone’s employees). Even when the Cardinals were 10.5 games back and a playoff run looked impossible (and we’ll admit: we’d lost hope), the players kept doing their job every day to the best of their ability. That didn’t mean that they won every game (and seriously, the Braves’ colossal collapse contributed majorly) but they still tried their best. And this time, their best was good enough to make the playoffs, and then good enough to beat the team with the best record in baseball, and then good enough to beat their division rivals. No reason to think that their good enough can’t win them a championship. And if it doesn’t? Then they at least know that they did their best.

2. Let fools act foolish, and you do what you know is right. The Cardinals aren’t saints…I know that. I’ve seen more than one mouthed word on camera that wasn’t appropriate. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Cardinals player who’d yell the f-bomb 3 times into a microphone the way Nyjer Morgan did when someone tried to interview him postgame, after he’d hit a game-winning hit (Don’t believe me? Go to youtube and type in his name and f-bomb…I’m not linking to it). Morgan and at least one other teammate went public with taunting and name-calling before the Cardinals series started. And that’s fine if that’s the kind of image you want to portray for your organization…good for you. Be a character instead of having any. And then no one will ever remember you for having any skill, but instead for being a nutcase.

I’m thankful that the Cardinals’ response was to play baseball. And play it better than the Brewers. Lesson? People are going to say silly, foolish, and sometimes even mean things to you. Your response should be to shut your mouth and do your best, and leave someone like Morgan, who can talk a big game and then bat .098 against your team, in the dust.

So as you can imagine, we will spend the next ten days or so rooting for our Cardinals, and praying that the boys can get by on less sleep than usual, because they’re going to want to watch the games. And their life-long Cardinals fan mama won’t have the heart to tell them no.

6 responses to “Lessons from a Baseball Season”

Great post, Nicole!!! What a great experience for your boys. I love how Pujols put on a time-out on the game so Fielder could savor an ovation from the Brewers fans on his last at-bat. A true sign of class and sportsmanship.

Very true Nicole. My boys are super excited too. We were going to let them stay up to watch it all last night, but they both fell asleep. Darren loves waking them up in the morning by jumping on their bed and yelling, “Cardinals won, Cardinals won, Cardinals won”. He’s been able to do that quite a bit lately!